Edmonton Oilers look to fix whatever broke during the all-star break

After 16 straight wins, the Edmonton Oilers certainly earned themselves a bit of a break.

What they didn’t count on was having some things actually get broken by the interruption in momentum by the NHL all-star weekend.

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Coming into hockey’s annual showcase having gone 11-0 over the month of January, the Oilers sat just one win shy of tying the league record of 17 straight wins before a nine-day break in their schedule.

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But coming out the other side of the rest and relaxation, the win streak wasn’t the only thing to go up in smoke, with 16-0 excellence giving way to 4-3-1 mediocrity.

A run of 14 straight games of allowing no more than two goals-against has all of a sudden seen them surrender no fewer than three over their past eight games.

And a penalty kill that had been on a tremendous tear, stopping 36 of 37 opposing man-advantages heading into the break, has since allowed 11 power-play goals on 24 opportunities.

That’s a 54.2 per cent success rate, down from 97.3 per cent, as their greatest strength has all of a sudden turned into their biggest weakness.

“When we came back from the break, I was asked quite a bit about the momentum and things were going really well,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “I think a lot of the things it didn’t really affect too much. I think the penalty kill, yes. And I think Stuart (Skinner).

“Through the month of January, he was the best goaltender and that takes out of his rhythm. He was playing so well and I think as a team we need to have a little more predictability in front of him. The chances that we’re giving up are too often, too good. Clean that up, it’s just so much easier for him to play his game.”

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But what exactly has changed from last month?

“That’s a great question,” Skinner said. “On my side of things, I kind of just focus on myself. I know the team’s working hard to obviously play well every single night. So, for me, for my own assessment, I just need to be a little more focused through the whole 60 minutes

“I think that’s pretty well it, to be honest. I think there’s been a couple moments where I’ve let off the gas pedal and in the NHL, if you do that, mistakes happen.”

But the biggest concern by far right now has to be the Oilers’ second-period performances. They were once again outscored 3-1 in an overtime loss to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, pushing the goal differential to 16-5 in middle frames since coming off the break — and not in Edmonton’s favour, either.

And that’s not on Skinner. Nor on the defence or on the offence. Not alone, anyway. Rather it’s been an overall lapse that, for whatever reason, continues.

Sure, they’ve been able to dig themselves out of those second-period ditches more often than not thanks to a high-octane offence that can crank things up in the third period. But Wednesday’s overtime loss suggests they shouldn’t become too reliant on third-period comebacks, even if the Oilers did manage to salvage a point out of what had been at one time a three-goal deficit.

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“It’s huge,” Skinner said of the third-period bounce backs. “It’s kind of been a theme, I’d say, the past two-and-a-half months where we end up scoring two, three, four goals. So, I know that this team has that resiliency of just never giving up and always battling, even when we’re down.

“Yesterday, we were down a bunch of goals and the guys just kept battling, kept fighting. So, I’m very grateful of how hard the guys work in front of me.”

Of course, a little extra oomf in the second period might make for less work in the third. Same goes for the penalty kill.

“Honestly, just little mini-mistakes,” Skinner said. “Through the years, I know when you make little mistakes, that’s when teams bite you in the butt. I think sometimes it works out your way so maybe they’ll hit a post, and that has happened when the streak was going on.

“Sometimes it goes post-and-in. So, for us I think it’s just getting back to our little small details, just doing the right things positionally and just having confidence in ourselves, which I know that we do as a group, because we’ve been unbelievable for a long, long period of time.

“And when you do something for a long period of time, it’s not a fluke.”

E-mail: [email protected]

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge

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